In 2010, our Research Group on Cultural Property held a working conference in Hofgeismar, Germany, to prepare the grant for a second three years of research. We had been well advised to invite Dwijen Rangnekar, as we wanted to enlarge our scope and include geographic indications as a further area of emphasis. As I we all came to understand during those days, the Indian local liquor “Feni” was maybe just one, but for him the best example to show the possible merits of geographical indications. Up to this point, the small unit of economists in our interdisciplinary group, had worked on sui generis rights for folklore as well as other intellectual property rights but had not yet focused on geographical indications. Dwijen characterized GI as a possibility to conserve cultural knowledge about food production by granting a regionalized monopoly on producing and labeling specific specialities. We quickly agreed on the many specific faults of the existing GI regime in Europe, but he made a strong case for GIs on an abstract level. While he was open for reforming the system, he was adamant that GIs in itself are a wonderful opportunity to make use of cultural property and bring economic development to regions which are at a disadvantage.

The research group consisted of anthropologists, ethnologists, legal scholars and economists, including agricultural economists. We were (and remain) everything but a consensually driven group, as the number of perspectives on a given problem were rarely smaller than the number of people attending a meeting. Normative positions clashed, methodological issues arose, and frequently academic standards were debated as fiercely as the empirical results from the field. Dwijen listened patiently, asked questions to understand positions and calmed everybody down by telling one or another anecdote or also a joke. During these discussions, Dwijen was a fellow anthropologist to the anthropologists, a fellow economist to the economists and, of course, above all, he was always the legal scholar, fearless of the normative discussion and eager to bring about a better legal system for the people. His ability to think and discuss along the lines of other disciplines was probably what impressed us the most, and in the years to follow, Dwijen constituted the “best guest” you could have in an interdisciplinary endeavor such as our research group on cultural property

We are grateful to have met Dwijen Rangnekar. He inspired us to do more research on geographical indications. He warmed our hearts, and he enlightened our minds. And he described Feni in such colorful and emotional terms that it seemed as if he had also warmed our bellies with it.

From November 10 to November 15, 2013, the Interdisciplinary Research Unit on the Constitution of Cultural Property hosted Professor John Comaroff, Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology/ Oppenheimer Research Fellow in African Studies (Harvard University), for intellectual exchange and a public lecture on “Ethnicity, Inc. Revisited“.

On the occasion of his visit, the entire team, collectively and individually, had plenty of opportunity to discuss their research projects in depth with Prof Comaroff who left us all in an energized and motivated state, ready to tackle the remaining months of our research time.

Professor Comaroff’s visit to Göttingen concluded with his public lecture which picked up main points from the widely received work Ethnicity, Inc. (2009), co-authored with Jean Comaroff. In an anecdote during the lecture he noted that “Ethnicity, Inc.“ had at one point even became mandatory reading for the employees of the largest South African company based on ethnicity, Bafokeng, Inc. – which had formerly been researched by him and Jean.

Professor Comaroff’s lecture aimed to recap, expand and update „Ethnicity, Inc.“ In 2000, the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) formed a corporation to invest in mining, forestry, industry and tourism. The idea behind this was to empower their peoples by „usher[ing] their rural chiefdoms into the world of global business,“ because the political fight for constitutional recognition had been focused upon too long. Comaroff then went on query the extent to which the future of ethnicity would lie in ethno-futures and entering the market place. In doing so, the binary of rural „traditional“ culture and urban Africa would be made to collapse.

Heritage, Comaroff pointed out, is alienable identity: its objects and objectifications may be consumed by others and sold on a market. To have culture to sell means having a presence in the world. This he illustrated with the rise of ethno-businesses in South Africa, with their cultural products being in high demand. The idea behind empowerment is constituted here with access to markets, material benefits and a people selling its “essential own” – as a brand. Selling culture challenges tried and not so true dichotomies such as tourist performances endangering or replacing “authentic“ traditions.

To Comaroff, politics and economics appear far more interlinked today, He stressed that the context in which culture, identity and politics are embedded, i.e. the nation-state, is changing. Coming from the “fiction of homogeneity” upon which European polities were founded, we now find ourselves in an age of acceptance of heterodox nationhood – a “cultural diversity within a civic order composed of universal citizens”. More than for Africa, this holds true for Europe with its nation-states born of European “colonial fantasy”. In African polities it is an essential right, in the pursuit of collective interest, to be different. Cultural identity, Comaroff stressed, “has become, simultaneously, a function of elective self-production and ascriptive biology”. Culture therefore congeals into a “genetically-endowed intellectual property”, becomes a form of capital and can be sold for profit.

Comaroff also noted the importance of legal instruments, as difference turns into a subject for legal actions. Hence “Ethnicity, Inc.” is a mixture of the commodification of culture, legal actions over cultural identity, the “displacement of the politics into the domain of jurisprudence” and the dissolving binary of rural and urban culture(s).

This is not a new phenomenon, as Comaroff showed by evoking the examples of the Pomo Indians, who went from being two homeless Native American families to being an ethnic group with a casino license, and Maryann Martin who opened a gaming house on the grounds of being the only member of the ethnic group of the Augustine Cahuilla Indians. The creation of ethno-businesses in the USA is mostly financed with the capital of non-Native Americans. Another point of interest is the proclaimed sovereignty of the state and its laws. Native American identity usually begins with a land claim, as “territory” is a major principle of sovereignty. The emergence of the prototypical Native American ethno-business depended on the recognition of legal sovereignty. Cultural identity is then incidental to these corporations. Only in few cases an ethnic group turns local knowledge into a brand from which arises an ethnic corporation, as is the case with the Pueblo of Sandoval, New Mexico, and their brand of “Hopi Blue” corn.

In recent times, the UN and the WIPO have come to recognize the “inherent” rights of indigenous peoples to their tangible and intangible cultural property. This has led to the acceleration of processes of incorporation. Comaroff told the story of the San/Bushmen in the Kalahari desert who were severly suppressed under colonialism and the San’s knowledge of the hoodia cactus which can stave off hunger and thirst. In 1963, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa became interested in the cactus and its effects; from then on word spread about the cactus as a hope for the alleviation of obesity without side effects. The bioactive component was patented under label P57 in 1997 and subsequently licensed to the British company Phytopharm and then to Pfizer – all under the impression that the San were extinct. An NGO representing the rights of the San was formed and protested against this case of biopiracy. This led to a profit-sharing agreement between Phytopharm and the San. The San “identity” has since gone through a reanimation, stimulated by the assertion of intellectual property coupled with a land claim. Today, the San are an ethno-corporation while their “identity” is debated by academics.

The major example in Comaroff’s talk was Bafokeng, Inc. which gained wealth with platinum and whose corporate history goes back to sage decisions made by one Bafokeng king in the nineteenth century. Buying land to protect it from white settlers and hence establishing the Bafokeng as a corporate, private owner, the terrain was defended from seizure. Today, Bafokeng Inc. is a nation of 300,000 shareholders and is involved in a complex network of companies yielding some $100 million per year. Comaroff noted that the success in turning Bafokeng Inc. into a hugely successful nation/business is accompanied by a lack of Bafokeng cultural identity.

The strategies of the Bafokeng, the San and Native Americans groups in the USA have several points in common: genealogical membership in their respective ethnic group; sovereignty vis-à-vis the nation state through incorporation based on land claims; and a reliance on ”lawfare” to crystallize or reproduce the sociological entity within which cultural identity is taken to inhere.

To Comaroff “Ethnicity, Inc.” is a “world-historical phenomenon in the making” with many roots in nation states’ search to distinguish themselves through unique cultures. “The ethnically-defined peoples” have taken ethnicity into the global sphere. As such, “Ethnicity, Inc.” is an important subject for anthropological research.

For further reading::
Comaroff, John L. and Jean (2009): Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Please note that all presentations will be held in German, with the exception of Prof. Dr. Comaroff’s presentation on November 14, which will be held in English.

Overview of presentations:

Thursday, October 31, 2013Contested Collections. Cultural heritage and the art trade in conflict?Anne Splettstößer, MA, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology and Alper Tasdelen, MA, Institute for International Law, Göttingen

Thursday, November 28, 2013Identity and contributions to the common poolProf. Dr. Kilian Bizer and Matthias Lankau, MA, Chair of Economic Policy and SME Research, Göttingen

Thursday, December 5, 2013Culture as special heritage? Indigenous groups between marginalisation and empowerment in IndonesiaProf. Dr. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Serena Müller, MA, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Göttingen

Thursday, January 9, 2014Golden Age Angkor: cultural heritage and national unity in CambodiaProf. Dr. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Aditya Eggert, MA, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Göttingen

Within a multidisciplinary perspective on Geographical Indications (GI) the workshop will cover a broad range of topics such as origin and tradition, specialties’ protection and marketing, and the creation and conservation of culinary heritage. With such discourse different questions arise, different methods become important, and different approaches are needed.

Focus will be placed on the interrelations between terroir and culinary heritage, and the categories of space and place will
need to be considered in discussion of the specification of a product by its spatial origin. Here, local tradition and knowledge, and their transmission and instrumentalization, become especially important. These discussions raise questions such as:
How are taste and place connected? Which implicit knowledge is instrumentalized and sold with a GI-product? Where can
effects of the product’s ennobling in status of culinary heritage be found?

Particular emphasis will be placed on the effects of GI-processes within a conservation-constitution perspective. This emphasis raises another series of questions. How do products and regional awareness change? Are there influences on the market chances or on trust in the EU-instrument? Which differences have to be detected between regions with established or relatively new protection systems?

Discussing a European legal instrument, our workshop aims at detecting governance structures which underpin the GI-system as well as meta-cultural practices of transnational GI-regimes. What kind of interests and conflicts emerge? How does the establishment of GIs diverge between actors, regions, and countries? Which effects on culture and economy are tangible? How do claims to common right and common good complement the GI’s exclusive character?

In an effort to support multidisciplinary discussion, dialogue, and active participation, the presentations will be held for no longer than 20 minutes. We hope to encourage all those attending to contribute to the joint discussion.

Do, 13. JuniAboriginal Exceptionalism and its Repercussions on Questions of Property. Prof. Dr. Francesca Merlan, School of Archeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Indigenous people are widely felt to remain outside desirable social norms in their relationship to property by the Australian state. The paper will draw from three arenas illustrating this realm of tension: The legal denial to recognize indigenous connections to land as involving property relations; the common interpretation of indigenous ways of handling of personal and moveable items as demonstrating an inability to maintain property; and the enabling of home rental and ownership for indigenous people as the government regards fixed residence and proprietary relationship as a remedy for some of the perceived social defects of indigenous people.

Published in 2009, “Ethnicity, Inc.” (co-authored by John and Jean Comaroff) explored the changing relationship between culture and the market. With examples ranging from venture capitalism by a group of traditional African chiefs to Native American casinos, San ‘Bushmen’ with patent rights and nations branding themselves, the book brought together anthropological and legal scholarship to shed light on the question “whither ethnicity?” In his Göttingen lecture, John Comaroff will recap and reconsider these phenomena to trace the contradictory effects of neoliberalism as it transforms identities and social being across the globe.

Working Conference at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, University of Göttingen, April 4–5, 2013
Co-sponsored by the DFG Research Unit on Cultural Property

Organized by Charles Briggs, Stefan Groth, and Regina Bendix.

“Justice” is a complex concept deeply entwined with the moral foundations of society. As a normative concept, justice is clothed in an absolute aura. And yet the deeply contextualized and hence continually negotiated nature of justice cannot be hidden. In focusing on language, this working conference seeks to shed light on this normative concept, looking at the negotiation of justice in specific contexts and media.

Different disciplines and schools of analysis have contributed to this question, ranging from linguistic anthropology to critical discourse analysis in disciplines such as political science, sociology as well as, more broadly speaking, media studies. We will use a broad working concept of discourse: the use of spoken and written language and multimodal forms of communication, as well as those more aligned with Foucauldian notions of discourse. This leaves room for different theoretical approaches to the concept.

Our working conference seeks to take stock of prior work and identify gaps, not least through the presentation of case studies. Negotiations on the international level and questions of health and social justice constitute the main thematic foci of the working conference. On the case level, we hope to see how “justice is in motion” depending on the communicativ

On December 10 and 11, 2012, the CP team hosted Prof. Dr. Ellen Hertz from the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, where she leads the synergia group entitled “Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Midas Touch?” (https://libra.unine.ch/Projets/Projets-en-cours/1310/L-en). Trained in both anthropology and law, Ellen Hertz’s presentations focused on questions of gender within heritage policy. She presented an evening lecture entitled “Sex, Lies and Heritage: Gender Equality -vs- Cultural Diversity, Round Three” – summarized in her abstract as follows:

At first viewing, it is difficult to view the UNESCO-driven desire to safeguard intangible cultural heritage (“ICH”) and promote cultural diversity as anything but laudable. However, as many have pointed out before me, the preservation of what has been called “traditional culture” raises a number of issues for another excessively laudable series of U.N.-based initiatives: covenants designed to guarantee what have been labeled as “universal human rights”. This is particularly true, it seems to me, when it comes to gender equality, and notably the 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Gender differentiation is central in innumerable ways to all cultures, and discrimination, either explicit or implicit, often follows. Gender differentiation can take forms ranging from sex-based dress codes during rituals, to exclusion of women (or men) from certain areas of traditional knowledge, to the baring of women from certain trades or forms of cultural ownership, not to mention forms of bodily transformation such as excision that are clearly off-limits for heritage preservation efforts.

The state parties responsible for drafting the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH were aware of these issues, and UNESCO even convened a working group that meet to produce specific recommendations on the subject. However, though the discussions were extremely interesting and sophisticated, they seem to have done more to illuminate problems at hand than to propose solutions. The guidelines and binding recommendations that were to have come from this work have not been issued or circulated. Indeed, the entire discussion seems to have disappeared from the UNESCO vitrine, and raising it today seems almost indecorous.
This paper is based on interviews with experts involved in these debates. It seeks to understand how the issue of gender inequality has been exited from the public sphere, and how it is handled in “private”, in the negotiations around specific propositions of ICH that reach the Paris office and the Intergovernmental Committee who screen UNESCO’s lists of ICH. It asks how UNESCO officials have in pragmatic ways “solved” a problem that I argue is fundamentally unsolvable if we respect the terms of the respective normative frameworks on the Conventions. I conclude by offering some suggestions as to a more productive framing of the problem of gender equality in a world where women disproportionately bear the burden of symbolizing and maintaining “cultural diversity”, and where the cause of sex equality is brandished by states for geopolitical aims.

Her afternoon workshop “Can Sex be Heritage?” was cast as a thought experiment. Using a cultural practice that is not part of ICH thus far and is not likely to ever be nominated permits one to understand what factors come together in the decision-making about “acceptable” ICH. Aside from issues such as UNESCO Puritanism, questions of scale and the nature of diplomatic negotiation, the concept of “patriomonial emotions” (borrowed from French ethnologist Daniel Fabre whose research team pursued this, documented in several workshops, in Paris: http://www.iiac.cnrs.fr/lahic/article186.html) proved particularly helpful in understanding what “emotional property” or characteristic a cultural practice needs to evoke in order to be suitable for heritage status. Lust is clearly not among them. The normative character of the heritage of humanity manifests itself thus even in this implicit guidance of aesthetic response. There was lively discussion intermingling with Ellen’s presentation, making us all look forward to if and when Ellen finds the time to write a book on a topic that will allow for a better understanding of heritage-making and its blind spots with regard to the humanity’s cultures.

One of the most thoroughly coded and meaningful things that human beings do and have traditionally done with their bodies must be sex. Sexual practices involve narratives, rituals, performance, beliefs about nature and the universe and skills, and yet nowhere in the intangible cultural heritage registers does one find them valorized or even mentioned. Why not? Is this just Puritanism, or does making bodies into heritage involve desexualizing them (or are these actually the same thing)? In this presentation, I would like to examine the rare examples or analogies I could find to see what they tell us about the ICH heritage regime’s techniques for disappearing sex.

At first viewing, it is difficult to view the UNESCO-driven desire to safeguard intangible cultural heritage (“ICH”) and promote cultural diversity as anything but laudable. However, as many have pointed out before me, the preservation of what has been called “traditional culture” raises a number of issues for another excessively laudable series of U.N.-based initiatives: covenants designed to guarantee what have been labeled as “universal human rights”. This is particularly true, it seems to me, when it comes to gender equality, and notably the 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Gender differentiation is central in innumerable ways to all cultures, and discrimination, either explicit or implicit, often follows. Gender differentiation can take forms ranging from sex-based dress codes during rituals, to exclusion of women (or men) from certain areas of traditional knowledge, to the baring of women from certain trades or forms of cultural ownership, not to mention forms of bodily transformation such as excision that are clearly off-limits for heritage preservation efforts.
The state parties responsible for drafting the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH were aware of these issues, and UNESCO even convened a working group that meet to produce specific recommendations on the subject. However, though the discussions were extremely interesting and sophisticated, they seem to have done more to illuminate problems at hand than to propose solutions. The guidelines and binding recommendations that were to have come from this work have not been issued or circulated. Indeed, the entire discussion seems to have disappeared from the UNESCO vitrine, and raising it today seems almost indecorous.
This paper is based on interviews with experts involved in these debates. It seeks to understand how the issue of gender inequality has been exited from the public sphere, and how it is handled in “private”, in the negotiations around specific propositions of ICH that reach the Paris office and the Intergovernmental Committee who screen UNESCO’s lists of ICH. It asks how UNESCO officials have in pragmatic ways “solved” a problem that I argue is fundamentally unsolvable if we respect the terms of the respective normative frameworks on the Conventions. I conclude by offering some suggestions as to a more productive framing of the problem of gender equality in a world where women disproportionately bear the burden of symbolizing and maintaining “cultural diversity”, and where the cause of sex equality is brandished by states for geopolitical aims.